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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysian officials said Sunday that they would seek help from territories near the island where a suspected piece of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet was discovered to try to find more plane debris. A new piece of debris, meanwhile, found on Sunday on the French island of Reunion in the western Indian Ocean turned out to be a […]

Oh, to be a fly on the wall for a girls' night out with two of country's biggest stars. Shania Twain and Miranda Lambert spent some quality time together after Lambert came to see Twain's concert in Nashville on Friday night. It seems like the concert was a bit therapeutic for Lambert, who recently split from Blake Shelton, as she hashtagged […]

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Sunday slammed President Barack Obama's forthcoming standards for power plant emissions, charging that they would do little for the climate at far too great an expense for American consumers. "It will make the cost of electricity higher for millions of Americans," Rubio, a presidential candidate, said […]

AGAWAM -- Two women were arrested Wednesday after allegedly attacking and injuring a lesbian couple they observed kissing at Six Flags New England, according to Agawam Police. Damarielys Mukhtar, 29, of Springfield and Nikia L. Butt, 27, of Holyoke were arraigned in Westfield District Court Thursday on charges of assault and battery and a civil rights violat […]

The pictures are sad and grotesque. An American dentist and his guide grinning over the remains of Cecil the Lion. Our sympathies run directly to the victim of the hunt, the lion. Walter Palmer, the dentist who killed Cecil, is not the first American to ignite disgust over the slaughter of some of the world's great animals. A little more than a year ago […]

In the first part of his new book Present Shock, media theorist Douglas Rushkoff explains how we have come to a “now-ist” “presentism” resulting in “narrative collapse.” If I understand him correctly, Rushkoff argues that new media, social change, and technologies make traditional story-telling untenable. While we are accustomed to stories that fit the mold of Campbell’s hero, we are no longer able to use or enjoy them (or any new Star Wars movie?) because

We have become too self-conscious to consume narratives uncritically (see everything from Beavis and Butthead to MSTK3000 to Community). [These references and the following are Rushkoff’s.]

We have become more interested in current individual performance (see the itinerant NBA star) than collective group history (see baseball rivalries).

Our pop storytellers in news and entertainment have reduced (betrayed?) storytelling to the serial exploitation and…

A ‘cult,’ according to Merriam-Webster, can be defined as “Great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work..(and)..a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion.”

Capitalism has been defined by adherents and detractors: Milton Friedman said, “The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of a system.” John Maynard Keynes said, “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”

Perhaps it’s best to turn to someone who actually practiced the art: “Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.” Al Capone said that.

Chemotherapy can damage healthy cells? Say it isn’t so? You don’t need a degree to figure this one out. Poison kills indiscriminately– always has and always will. While damaging healthy cells, chemotherapy also triggers them to secrete a protein that sustains tumour growth and resistance to further treatment. Researchers in the United States made the “completely unexpected” finding they claimed while seeking to explain why cancer cells are so resilient inside the human body when they are easy to kill in the lab.

Only through the forces that have carefully conspired to thwart meaningful advances in cancer research and treatment over the past century has chemotherapy succeeded. In what reality do we live in when cut, poison and burn are the only ways acceptable to treat…

After a hiatus from blogging, I am back. Work, friends, the offline world has stolen me from blogdom for six months, but I think I am back. There have been times when I wish I had never quit blogging but I guess I needed some perspective and some prioritising and value-checking to do.

I am not sure what shape the blog will take from down on, but having a tete-a-tete with the hereafter will definitely have an impact on what I think and say and how I say it.

PS. This was shown when I pressed the Publish button:
“Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” Barbara Kingsolver